The impact of the 1972 eruption of Alaid volcano in the Kuril Islands on ecological systems

An unusual eruption occurred in 1972 on the Alaid volcano island, which is the largest and the most active in the Kuril Islands. The eruption center was very close to the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. Lava flows were discharged into the sea to build new land. The other notable features of this eruption include the generation of explosion craters, a cinder cone, and a major ash fall. The ash fall destroyed vegetation on much of the island’s area. In 2006 the affected area was investigated and the beginning regeneration of the vegetative cover was studied; as well as the island’s soils were studied for the first time. We show the scale of damage to the vegetation, the main factors that have controlled the character and degree of the damage, as well as outline some features in the recovery changes. On the whole, the vegetative cover has been destroyed or altered over an area of about 8 km 2 . The vegetative cover on Atlasov I. will have remained altered for a period of a few tens of years to a few hundred years (the ash fall zone), or even a few thousand years (the lava flows). In addition to this damage, the eruption expanded the island’s area, generated new ecosystems, and to some degree increased the diversity of the vegetative cover by adding seral communities to it.